Was that always the intention of Overkill, to deliver a western take on what has traditionally been an eastern franchise?
Neil: When the Grindhouse/pulp idea was first banded around we were worried that the creators of the original games weren’t going to get what we were trying to do. But we went through that gate and sent them a two minute demo and they replied “Yeah, we get this, it’s cool”, and the Asian market is really obsessed with American culture anyway, so I think they understood what we were doing and just let us run with it.

Jonathan: They had some input on G, he was an interesting character. And because Overkill is positioned as a prequel we could explore the character and do unexpected things with the story.

Neil: Yeah, those restrictions with G were really good in that we could create a polar opposite in Washington. You know, G does things by the book, very straight-laced, whereas Washington is just shoot and ask questions later, and we thought that was great for the 80s buddy cop vibe, which was a lot of fun to do.

Overkill is a Wii-exclusive, but while you were demoing the game you mentioned that you’d implemented Xbox 360-style achievements for doing certain things, and that you felt technically you were pushing the Wii to its limits. Why stick to Wii and not release on 360/PS3?
Neil: The primary reason is obviously the Wii-mote which works perfectly as a gun, and I think when it comes to other platforms there’s not that peripheral in place. We also wanted to bring something new to the Wii market. People are crying out for a more adult game. You know, we’ve got Wiis ourselves and we’re always looking around for something that appeals to us. You’ve got your Mario Galaxy and all that which are great, but it’s crazy that more people aren’t developing more mature titles all that often.

Did you have any input on the Hand Cannon peripheral? I mean, Nintendo released the Zapper over 12 months ago but haven’t done all that much with it. Why not just stick with that?
Neil: We had mocked up some very early designs for the Hand Cannon, and SEGA brought in some prototypes for us to have a play with and we just thought it was very cool. It obviously looks very different to the Zapper and has more bollocks than any other Wii peripherals out there. And we were happy that it actually looked like a gun, which was great!

Mark Slater (Lead Artist): We actually got to pick which gun we went with for the game, so we went with the revolver design because it’s more iconic than all the other standard plastic pistols that are out there.

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